


Aleks is Fine

by TheLastDruid



Series: The Last Druid [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Grooming, M/M, Medical Trauma, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Scarification, Scarring, Sexual Abuse, Slice of Life, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21915385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastDruid/pseuds/TheLastDruid
Summary: Days pass, and Ihiaku does not come home.Part 1 of The Last Druid series.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: The Last Druid [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578373
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Aleks is Fine

Days pass, and Ihiaku does not come home.

Aleks wakes up every morning, in their bed, and he stares at the ceiling and wonders how to feel. He isn’t sure if he wants to examine the emotions he has, roiling just beneath the surface of a frozen sort of numbness. He thinks they might overwhelm him if he tried: might swallow him up like an undertow, like a crashing tidal wave.

His scars are sensitive against the cotton of the sheets, shiny and pink with newness. Aleks shifts between them, very slightly, and very carefully does not think about why his emotions make him think of the sea.

\---

Aleks sits at the breakfast bar and scrolls through listings. Job listings, apartment listings. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he knows he won’t be able to afford their-- _ Ihiaku’s _ \--apartment on part-time wages. The bookstore can barely afford to pay him as it is.

He sells the valuables Ihiaku didn’t take with him--the living room set; the ornate full-length mirror in the bedroom; any clothes and accessories left behind, not that many were. He alternates rapidly between telling himself that Ihiaku  _ left _ them for him to sell, for him to make a new start from, and berating himself for being childish and naïve. Ihiaku left the things he didn’t want behind: Furniture, clothing,  _ Aleks _ .

He wars with himself over selling the bed. It’s impractical to have to buy a new one; he’ll never get anything but peanuts for it, used. Ihiaku left all the sheets and buying new ones will be a hassle. But it’s king-sized, and moving it will be an issue if he’s downsizing. And the sheets all smell like…

He orders a new bed from Ikea; shoves it up against the wall under the single window in his cramped new studio apartment. The sheets are cheap, from WalMart, and smell like absolutely nothing at all.

\---

It wasn’t like he didn’t know things were...off.

Not  _ wrong _ , exactly--Ihiaku didn’t touch him, while he was underage; never so much as hinted (out loud) that he wanted Aleks to touch  _ him _ . The scars on Aleks’ body were not placed there without his consent--he'd known what he was getting into. He’d agreed to it. He’d  _ said yes _ .

But things weren’t  _ right _ , exactly, either, in a million little ways that were hard to put a finger on, and when Alex had tried to compile the ones he could in his head they had all seemed so...silly. Insignificant and stupid. It wasn’t like Ihiaku hit him, or called him names, or accused Aleks of cheating and went through his phone. Ihiaku didn’t lock him away or lock him  _ out _ or deny him food or threaten to kick him onto the street.

He hadn’t had to, though, Aleks knows really. Lock Aleks away--where would Aleks have tried to go? And Aleks had known--God, he’s so angry and disgusted with himself, now--Aleks had  _ known his place _ . Aleks hadn’t needed threats to know when he could and couldn’t get away with something, when he could argue back or when to just keep his mouth shut. Things were fine, as long as he made good choices. Most of the time, making good choices wasn’t even a chore.

Aleks doesn’t know if he misses Ihiaku, or if the empty void gnawing at the edges of his chest is really the fear that one day, Ihiaku will come back.

\---

Those last few weeks, Ihiaku had doted on him.

Soft like the barest hint of a new spring’s breeze, he’d changed the dressings on Aleks’ new scars. His fingertips had been like feathers as he’d daubed away clear plasma, preventing it from crusting over yellow; barely brushed Aleks’ skin as they’d skirted over the edges of new growth. How very carefully he had checked the tape at the site of Aleks’ IV, searching for looseness, for the swelling of a blown vein. His hands had been cool on Aleks’ neck--the last few inches of unmarked skin, where an IV  _ could _ be taped. 

Dizzy through a haze of pain and morphine, Aleks only just barely remembers the sex. Ihiaku had been gentle like he hadn’t been since the first few months--his hands, soft and uncalloused, smooth on Aleks’ cock; his mouth like wet velvet, warm and blissful like a dream. Out of it as he was, Aleks couldn’t even muster up the instinctive fear of Ihiaku’s viciously sharp barracuda teeth--the reason Ihiaku went so rarely to his knees for Aleks, more because of Aleks’ discomfort than any true inhibition on Ihiaku’s part. Ihiaku was by turns both a selfish and a generous lover.

Ihiaku, Aleks knows, liked seeing evidence of his ownership--nothing they had ever agreed upon in so many words, but ownership all the same. Ihaku liked riding Aleks and using sharp nails to gouge red lines into his chest; liked biting hard enough to bruise and jacking off over Aleks while Aleks was tied, leaving pearls of semen spattered like abstract art across Aleks’ stomach. It was...fine. Aleks got off, unless he really didn’t want to. He didn’t ever  _ really _ worry that one day, Ihiaku wouldn’t untie him in time for work.

He thinks, maybe he and Ihiaku just weren’t very compatible. It’s not like having different preferences in bed is a  _ crime _ .

\---

Ihiaku used to call him beautiful. Aleks catches his own reflection in store windows, once in a while, since he doesn’t own a mirror or much like looking at himself, anymore. He definitely doesn’t see it.

Ihiaku used to fuss at him until Aleks let him cut his hair, or pin it up at the sides. They would go out to dinner ( _ out to dinner, a luxury _ ) and Ihiaku would button them both into suits, expensive jackets and waistcoats and silk ties tied in Windsor knots. Ihiaku would nag at him about old, oversized sweaters and holes in his jeans and the big, round wire frames of his glasses. For Ihiaku, ‘dressing down’ was loose blouses, long necklaces, and flowing skirts without crinolines; bulky sweaters hand-knitted from alpaca wool and brand name yoga pants with the logo riding tantalizingly low on the small of his back. When his shirt rode up, the smooth, silvery scales gathered there would gleam under the apartment’s artificial lighting, and Aleks would look up from whatever pile of books he was crouched and pouring over on the floor and be overcome with the urge to frame Ihiaku’s narrow hips in his hands, to press a kiss to the pale lilac of those scales and skin.

He never did it, of course. Sometimes now he wonders why.

\---

He doesn’t know why he buys the plants. Plants are expensive, lately--produce especially, but flowers and houseplants, too. He buys them anyways. They’re half-dead when he gets them, so he figures he won’t feel too bad if he kills them. 

Aleks has never owned a plant in his life.

He names the four of them after poets: Shakespeare, Poe, Emerson and Cummings. He doesn’t have any tables and his bookshelves are crammed full, double-stacked, so instead he puts them in cracked dishes on top of the more stable book piles and hopes that will mitigate any potential water damage. He considers sticking Poe on the sink in the bathroom, before he remembers his only window and the fact that plants need light to live. Poe gets balanced on top of the book pile on the end of the kitchen counter. Aleks rarely cooks anything so complicated as to require a cutting board, so he figures it’ll probably be fine.

He makes tea, cutting open one paper bag and rationing out the leaves carefully, and he pours the rest of the water from the kettle into a waxed-paper cup of instant ramen. It’s cheap enough that he can afford it, though some months food’s iffy--makes him think longingly of Ihiaku’s doctor’s salary and fresh tangerines; of the soft, oily texture of  _ sashimi _ and the broad, crisp leaves of deep green  _ bok choi _ . He fills the kettle with tepid water and uses it as a watering can for his new plants. The edges are of their leaves are browning, dry and rough and papery-feeling, and he thinks that probably isn’t right. Nothing about the  _ bok choi _ had seemed yellow or wilted.

At Ihiaku’s, things that were yellow were meant to be so: Butter, and corn, and little triangles of pineapple in a thin syrup, in a can. Yellow was a happy colour, like in the stories Aleks had read as a child. Yellow in the stories was only sunshine on summer days and the warm glow of firelight. 

Aleks’ parents weren’t rich, really, and they certainly didn’t have money to spend the way Ihiaku did, but they’d protected him from the worst of what the world had to offer. These days Aleks knows better: Yellow is piss and sweat stains and jaundice, cheap beer and thin vomit. Yellow is the watery, chicken-flavoured broth that accompanies his meagre portion of noodles, and the little bubbles of oil that float here and there on the surface.

It’s hot out, and he’s not hungry, but Aleks finishes his meal anyways. Lately he finds that he’s always cold.

\---

Ihiaku kept trinkets; jewellery and accessories. A set of combs, studded with colourful gems: “Ivory, passed down from my grandmother;” he’d say, as he used them to pin back heavy lengths of silken black hair. There were bracelets of irregularly-shaped silver beads that clattered softly where they glinted at Ihiaku’s wrists, and a massive golden necklace that Ihiaku brought out only on special occasions, one that he liked to pair with evening gowns for hospital fundraisers--the kinds of dresses that showed off his shoulders and plunged down extravagantly in the back. The necklace looked like a gilded wishbone, and so gently did it cradle Ihiaku’s slender neck.

A resin pendant on a cord, holding charms and something that shone like glimmering bronze scales. Dangling pairs of earrings shaped like fangs or shark’s teeth, and explanations that came easy to Ihiaku’s lips: Zoo and aquarium souvenirs. Thrifted vintage finds. The golden wishbone necklace, he told Aleks, an artisanal goldsmith’s commission.

Aleks believes him _._ Aleks _believes_ him _._ _Aleks believes him, really, he does._

\---

Aleks dreads grocery shopping with an intensity that borders on desperation, a Pavlovian response bred from the sick flashing of the ‘Card Declined’ message across the card terminal screen and too much hasty math done in bright-lit aisles, trying to stretch the money in his wallet out another two weeks. There’s a pit in his throat as soon as he steps through the automatic sliding doors, but he swallows resolutely around it.

He skips the fresh produce and meats entirely. The displays aren’t exactly looking the healthiest--the boxes and coolers perhaps not very well filled out, and the vegetation perhaps a little softer and limper than entirely desirable, but it’s still an abundance he could never afford. Instead he grabs a loaf of bread with a discount sticker on it, Best Before date the end of the week: 75 cents off. He heads to the dry goods aisle.

He finds his most expensive purchase right off the bat: a bag of white rice, heavy enough that he knows his shoulders will ache when he’s finished walking it home. From there, his purchases are largely in cans: chicken and tuna, a single can of ham; green beans and chickpeas and pear halves in water. More ramen noodles, and peanut butter and a plastic jar of orange drink mix. A single, precious canister of tea, costing almost as much as the rice.

Cooler aisles: Margarine. He hesitates over but decides against a few ounces of mozzarella. Aleks gazes longingly at a container of lemon yogurt, but he shakes his head against the memory of Ihiaku feeding him in the sunlight of their kitchen, licking citrus and cream off of cool, slender fingers. He turns towards the registers.

A hot flush of shame creeps over him when his card gets declined. Aleks abandons the green beans, the margarine, the tea. This time, when he punches in his pin, the transaction goes through. He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and starts loading what will fit into his messenger bag.

The walk home takes a little under forty-five minutes. He gets in the door and drops his bags on the mat with little fanfare, and then he leaves them there as he drags himself up the stairs to his bed. He flops facedown on the unmade covers and doesn’t move for a long while. The scars on his shoulders smart and blister, rubbed raw where the strap of his bag ground against them.

Aleks kicks off his jeans, struggles out of his sweater, and wraps himself in the blankets before he can catch a glimpse of his own bare skin. He stays like that while the sun sets and he drifts off into an uneasy slumber.

Tomorrow, he will go and visit his parents.

\---

Visiting the care home never stops hurting. Aleks keeps going back anyways.

Brain scans on his parents, soon after he had healed them, had revealed whole and healthy brains but irregular activity, and observation had yielded the unfortunate truth that while Aleks’ ritual scars could heal a body in ways previously unknown to man--the bolts holding his mother’s hip in place materializing, shiny and new, on the bedside cabinet; the crushed hand that his father had needed amputated lying unscarred and perfect on the hospital sheets--his power over the mind ended at the purely physical. His parents are missing all of their memories from the extensive brain damage the accident had caused them, and this extends to more than the face of their son or the names of their childhood pets.

Lacking a first language but long having outgrown the short window of time in which children acquire one, communicating with the elder Rockwells is a challenge. Limited success has been made with picture booklets akin to those used in therapy with the severely autistic. Over the past year, his parents have relearned how to feed, dress, and bathe themselves, albeit clumsily--their brains in working order, they retain the instinctive human aversion to soiling themselves, and constant filth--and no longer require exactly round-the-clock care, but this is roughly where progress has ended. They exhibit emotion, but infrequently and in stunted, childlike bursts. They know Aleks now, but as a face that has been with them since their near-resurrection, and not as the son they loved and raised for more than fifteen years.

At least three of the doctors in the care home are writing papers surrounding the definitive boundaries between behaviors that must be learned in childhood and those that can be taught to adults. Case studies compare Annaliese and Nigel Rockwell to feral children, to Genie. Aleks allows the studies, within strict ethical parameters, for a reduced fee paid to the government facility. Even with the majority of the cost covered, he’s barely able to make ends meet.

Aleks’ mother smiles beatifically at him when he opens the door to their room. Her blonde hair is streaked with silver and skims the tops of her shoulders; she sits calmly and hums along with the classical music playing on the radio while he brushes and braids it. His father stares out the window and sways very slightly, a large pair of binoculars clutched to his chest--birdwatching, or trying to, though few are out on this overcast day. The simple things entertain them the most, lately. 

The chattier nurses tell Aleks his parents are their easiest patients.

Aleks’ father was a guidance counsellor at the local high school, before the accident. He built miniature trains and complex diorama landscapes for them to run through, resplendent with more greenery than Aleks had ever seen in his lifetime, and had nurtured a budding interest in ornithology. He snuck chocolate cereal and fruit roll-ups into the grocery cart for Aleks throughout his childhood, with an exaggerated wink and a finger pressed to smiling lips.

His mother had worked for a florist shop, arranging bouquets and working the register instead of daring touch anything that might still be growing-- “I have the  _ blackest _ thumbs,” she used to say, laughing, “It’s a miracle they hired me!” She was a decent cook who made a wicked macaroni and cheese, who baked Aleks a boxed chocolate cake every year on his birthday and sang while she puttered around, waiting for it to cool so she could ice it. She gave piano lessons to a few of the neighbours' children on Wednesday and Friday nights.

Now they live in a single room, and his father watches curiously as Aleks approaches. Aleks wants his dad to reach out and pull him into a hug, to say that he’s proud and that Aleks made the right choice. Instead, his father reaches for a can of diet cola sitting on the dresser behind him, and turns back to the window and its dearth of birds.

Aleks wonders, not for the first time, if it would have been kinder to let them die.

\---

A list of things that Aleks does not know that he wants, in no particular order:

Affection. Intimacy. A hand to stroke his hair or rub salve into his scars, when they twinge. A sex life that's soft and sweet, like vanilla cake. A partner who reminds him kindly to get a haircut or buy new clothes, instead of badgering him into a certain appearance; who wants him to put word to his desires and dislikes. Someone who will go with him to the care home, and sit close while he tucks a blanket around his father’s shoulders and holds his mother’s hand. Compliments that aren’t backhanded. Pleasure that doesn’t come with pain.

He doesn’t know the difference between compromise and giving in; stitch by stitch handing over the reins to your life until you’re grasping, desperate, at your last few shreds of control. These thoughts do not occur to him, because he hasn’t ever known anything else--he’s been tricked into thinking that this is the status quo.

It won’t do him any favours, down the line, but this, too, is something he does not know.

\---

He used to imagine the introduction:

_ “This is Ihiaku,” _ Aleks used picture himself telling his parents, Ihiaku standing tall and strong and handsome beside him,  _ “He’s my partner. He’s the one who helped me bring you back.” _

Life has a way of throwing curveballs, even when you think there aren’t any left for it to throw.

\---

Someone has stolen his  _ fucking _ bike, which is impressive, actually, considering how monumentally shitty it was--old and battered, second-or-third-or-maybe-fourth-hand as it had been when Aleks nabbed it off the side of the road a little more than a year ago. Getting the chains replaced had been cheaper than buying a whole new bike, even if the guy at the bike shop had looked at him when he brought it in with an expression that was half awed, half utterly appalled. It’s still basically stuck in third gear, but eh, beggars can’t be choosers.

Aleks supposes he isn’t really surprised. The bike lock that had been looped, unlocked, around the handlebars when he found it, staining the paper ‘FREE’ sign orange with rust, had been one hard look away from crumbling completely. He’d actually been planning on picking up a new one on his way home from work, but clearly he’d been a real asshole to some puppies in a past life or something, and Karma had finally come calling to collect. Past Aleks could go fuck himself.

He spends the rest of his evening skulking around the area of main square the seafolk woman--Haukea--had pointed him to, not really sure what he’s looking for but looking nonetheless. He asks a few of the local urchins and a sharp-eyed beholder woman to keep an ear to the ground for him, so to speak, and in return shares his dinner with them--the kids, at least; the woman declines to partake. ‘Dinner’ in this case is actually a plain bag of potato chips, but at least it’s family-sized. It’s fine; Aleks doesn’t eat much, anyways.

_ Stolen: Bike _ , Aleks composes in his head as he licks salt and grease off his fingers,  _ Looks like someone vomited up their organs and left the resulting mess to fester. Please kindly return to the Super Mart on the corner of Bond and Main: I can’t afford a transit pass either, asshat. _

Maybe he  _ should _ put up signs, he thinks, as he crumples up the chip bag and stuffs the garbage and his water bottle back in his messenger bag, where the foil is sure to get crumbs all over everything. Could be just crazy enough to work.

\---

_ “You’re mine, now,” Ihiaku had whispered, scalpel dragging a line of fire down Aleks’ chest, and Aleks had lost count by then of how many days he had lain on the plastic sheeting covering their living room floor, spread-eagled in a ritual circle of salt with tears leaking into his ears, his hair. Everything was burning agony despite the drugs coursing through his system, and he’d long since shredded the flesh of his lips and teeth and tongue, trying not to scream with it. He was sweating, which stung every weeping inch of flayed skin, and every breath he took felt wet and grating and awful. _

_ Ihiaku had reached up, cupping Alek’s cheek tenderly in one gloved and blood-tacky hand. _

_ “You’ll always be mine.” _

Aleks wakes with a start, sweat soaking through his nightclothes and into the sheets. His heart is pounding and racing. When he manages to fumble his glasses onto his face, the time on the stove clock reads four twenty-three AM.

He presses his back to the cool wall behind him and curls himself around a pillow. He does not go back to sleep for a long, long time.

\---

Aleks hasn’t touched himself in anything more than a perfunctory way in months.

If he’s being honest with himself, even that much took ages to feel comfortable with again--the sight of his own skin makes something in his gut twist sharply, in a decidedly unpleasant way. These days, when his hormones decide to run him through the wringer, he has a tendency to clench his eyes shut tight and try and get things over with: quickly, and with as little skin-on-skin contact as possible.

Once or twice he’s tried imagining things, tried fantasizing, but inevitably his thoughts stray back to Ihiaku--crowding Aleks up against a wall and kissing him hungrily; grinning wickedly over his shoulder as Aleks gripped his hips in trembling hands and worked his way into the heat of Ihiaku’s body; fisting Aleks’ hair and growling low and holding him down as Aleks gagged and swallowed around the smooth head of his dick. The images that spring to mind feel more like word association than they are truly arousing. Aleks wonders, sometimes, if maybe he just doesn’t like sex.

Sometimes he dreams of strangers, and it’s not much like the memories--he feels unworried, and at peace, not like he might mess up at any moment, or like the situation is spiraling slowly out of his control. The hands on his body are warm and gentle, the breathless noises he draws forth appreciative, almost  _ joyful _ \--but when he wakes and tries to chase the feeling, the visions vanish like candle smoke, drifting hazily out of reach. Sometimes he thinks too hard about them and they start to seem unrealistic, just silly pipe dreams. It just leaves him feeling hollow and unsatisfied and vaguely ashamed, for reasons he couldn’t put word to if he tried.

Who would he ask, if he was looking for a partner? He doesn’t  _ know _ people as more than vague acquaintances. Besides, even if he did, he doesn’t have a lot going for him--worn clothes, overlong hair, a fairly average face. A body marked almost  _ everywhere _ by a partner who wasn’t them, in the most permanent of fashions. Even for people who don’t mind scars, Aleks suspects his ritual markings would be...a lot.

He pushes it out of his mind, and does his best not to think about it. It’s a tactic that so far has worked well enough.

\---

He sits at one of the stools he leaves shoved up against the kitchen counters, and he breathes for what feels like a minute but has to be much longer, because the tea in his hands goes cold. He drinks it on autopilot, too aware of what it cost to really waste it, his mind a whirlwind of the past few hours. Hour. It can't have been more than an hour, fuck.

' _ You'd throw yourself on a sword for the dick who just mugged you, wouldn't you? _ '' Isn't it always the case that the snappy retorts come too late? Aleks is overwhelmed with the need to explain--that this isn't him, isn't his life; he isn't some sort of martyr, thank you--that there's a  _ large fucking difference _ between wanting to help out the people who  _ saved your life _ and throwing yourself in the path of danger recklessly. That he'd walked by Listen, probably getting hassled, literally hundreds of times before and done nothing and kept his head down, too caught up in his own numb existence and feeling like he had nothing to give. That one meal and a bed and doing her the great fucking  _ favour _ of keeping his dick in his pants isn't actually enough to balance that out; that he wouldn't have had anything to give in the  _ first _ place if he hadn't just been at the right place at the right time and, what, not stolen a guy's credit card? That he certainly hasn't  _ earned _ anything for feeding a starving teenager when he knows what it's like to choose between rent and food, and why does he feel the need to--to what,  _ justify _ this to Eadric, that he's just as much of a jaded asshole, albeit a non-combative one? Two acts of basic human decency don't make Aleks a saint. They make him  _ lucky _ , and he's terrified that at any minute, his luck is going to run out.

It hits him again, very suddenly, that he almost died today, and not in a vague and nebulous sort of sense--it was going to happen. It almost  _ did _ happen. Fuck. Holy fuck. Flavia had a precognitive vision of him  _ dead _ .

Aleks picks up his phone and, very calmly, calls into work to say that he feels like shit and won't be in--food poisoning, he lies, he'll be fine tomorrow. As he does this, his hoodie sleeve slides down just enough that he can see the cuff of the shirt beneath, which is stained with blood. Right. He healed Eadric. Mechanically he hangs up, gets off his stool and heads to the bathroom, shucking his hoodie and dumping his shirt in a sinkful of cold water. He catches a glimpse of his own chest and arms and wants to vomit, so he shoves his arms back into his hoodie sleeves and closes his eyes, willing the nausea away. His body doesn't look like  _ him _ anymore.

It doesn't really work. Aleks stumbles out of the bathroom and onto his bed; wraps himself tight as a knot around a pillow and pushes his back up against the wall, and he shakes apart in a panic attack that takes longer to come out of than he will ever, ever admit to anyone.  _ Stupid _ , he berates himself over and over,  _ stop being a baby. You didn't even get hurt. You're fine. _

_ You're  _ **_fine._ **

**\---**

There’s a little voice in the back of his head, and it never shuts the  _ fuck _ up.

He pulls on a hoodie and the voice says, reprovingly,  _ That ugly thing? Aleksander, you know I hate that old sweater. _ His hair brushes his shoulder blades and he hears the soft clicking of a tongue; the words,  _ You’ve let it grow so long, when was the last time you cut this? _ He opens his cupboards, reduced once again to bare minimum, and the voice chides him:  _ You’re just barely scraping by; I don’t know how you’ve managed without me. _

As he changes:  _ Such a beautiful specimen. I could just eat you up.  _

When he fumbles his words:  _ Useless. Can’t you do anything right? _

When he tries, desperately, to tell himself he’s moved on:  _ You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten me. I know you better than that. _

And when he closes his eyes, an indigo gaze in the darkness:

_ Don’t worry, Aleksander. I promise: I never break my favourites. _

\---

His parents are just finishing physical therapy when he arrives at the care home, sans angry bodyguard and still kind of furious despite getting his way, though guilt is starting to creep in around the edges of that, leaving his stomach in a knot. He nods awkwardly at the PT and pulls out the gift he brought his parents: two packages of pudding cups, still cold from the grocery store cooler. His father gets chocolate; his mother, butterscotch. Aleks helps her pull her hair back so she can eat without making a mess, and unwraps each of them a plastic spoon.

Okay, so maybe he was too harsh, and probably he's fucking blown any chance he had at being friends with Eadric, but--so what, like Eadric was really acting like he wanted to be friends, anyways; way to be pathetic. And Aleks knows firsthand how badly a financial gap of any sort can fuck up any relationship, though admittedly it was never exactly the case that he was  _ friends _ with Ihiaku. Still. Things probably would have ended in a disaster. 

_ Because  _ **_you_ ** _ are a disaster _ , whispers Ihiaku's voice in his head, almost lovingly, and Aleks only notices that he's grinding his teeth when his jaw starts to ache. He looks down and his fists are white-knuckled around some of the wrapped plastic spoons, short nails digging painful crescents into his palms. His father makes a soft, distressed sort of noise, so Aleks drops the spoons back into the box they came from and forces himself to relax, to put on a smile.

"I'm sorry," he tells his father, who has abandoned his dessert and is looking at Aleks with wide, scared eyes, "I'm sorry, it's okay. I'm okay." His father doesn't relax, exactly, but he doesn't shy away when Aleks reaches out with a napkin to wipe away a smear of chocolate, caught on his upper lip. After a moment, he goes back to eating.

His mother is finished, so Aleks gathers her garbage and goes to toss it into the trash. When he turns back, he finds her swaying to the music on the radio, eyes closed. Her hands are twitching against the coverlet of her bed, and, worried, Aleks steps forward to see if something has her distressed, only to have his heart leap into his throat.

Her fingers aren't twitching: They're  _ tapping _ . Like she's playing the piano.

Aleks buries his face in his hands and very firmly tells himself not to cry, the past two weeks and everyone in it suddenly the absolute last thing on his mind.  _ This _ , more than anything else, is what is important. 

This is what makes everything worth it.

\---

People, he decides muzzily when he wakes up in his bed (despite having no memories of putting himself there), need to stop taking off any of their clothes in his living room. In his general vicinity would be preferable, but he’ll take in his living room. That thought makes him think of Eadric’s arm and the deep, unhealed scratches there, though, bared to the dim lighting, which in turn makes Aleks want to vomit and also throw something. Partially it’s defensive anger, that someone would hurt themselves on his behalf when people hurting themselves for him is the _last_ thing he wants; partially because it was very clear that he didn’t have any choice in the matter, and every fibre of his being rebels against this with an awful, familiar, adrenaline-fueled mixture of _indignance-terror-resignation_. He cycles through the three with alarming rapidity if he thinks about it too long (how much he _hates_ people making his choices for him, the sick fear he can’t shake of nebulous retribution if he doesn’t just _let_ _them_ and the way he always, inevitably folds, like a house of cards, and back to how much he _hates it_ ) so instead of focussing on that, he gets up and shuffles his way through the piles of notes on the floor, towards the kitchen. He is an adult, and he will make bad decisions with impunity. More than a little bit out of spite, he chooses to ignore the acid roiling in his stomach and makes the executive decision to ingest more caffeine.

The jar of instant coffee isn’t where it normally is, though, sitting on the kitchen counter It isn’t in the cupboards either, and it’s not anywhere weird, like the fridge or the bathroom cabinets--he checks. There’s no empty--or full--container in the garbage bag. It has  _ mysteriously _ disappeared.

Aleks wonders if you can want to be friends with someone and at the same time want to  _ strangle them _ .

\---

_ waking up is agony, it's the hardest thing he's ever done and yet it's completely involuntary, he hits the floor with his muscles jerking and blood pooling and every nerve fucking screaming at the top of its goddamn lungs and then he's just  _ **_awake_ ** _ and it's horrible it's hell its the worst fucking thing, he might actually scream and he keeps screaming while there's noise and clatter and someone yelling beside him and fuck thank fuck he loses time the blackout hits him like paradise-- _

_ waking up again later and everything is heavy, it’s so heavy, breathing feels like theres a rock on his chest and everything is on  _ **_fire_ ** _ ; he can't  _ **_move_ ** _ and his throat is raw and it's in and out like this over and over, over and over the cycle never ends and he’s convinced that he'll be stuck in this loop this  _ **_hell_ ** _ forever-- _

_ one brief moment of clarity as time wears on so slowly, grains of sand in an hourglass that take forever to fall: the drugs arent working, i could have told them the drugs arent working, they cant keep me out they just keep me trapped fuck fuck  _ **_fuck_ ** _ \-- _

_ it's so slow, it goes so slow, consciousness returning in hitches and starts -- eventually he can feel his fingertips feel his heartbeat feel his every breath and it's awful, it aches it aches down to his bones, it's a rod of ice it's searing fire but if he tries if he tries if he  _ **_really tries_ ** _ and oh fuck oh gods he has to doesn’t he he has to try-- _

He turns his head.

There's no one there.

_ and fading, in and out and slowly, so slowly more often in than out but every time he drags his eyelids open (and it feels like sandpaper it feels like screaming it feels like every bone is made of lead he'd been so sure nothing could be worse than the carving but  _ **_this_ ** _ oh god oh fuck this is--) _

_holding onto thoughts is hard his head is swimming but he_ ** _looks_** _,_ _he has to check he has to_ ** _see_** _and he does he finally manages it but when he does there’s nobody-- nobody's--_

_ nobody's there _

_ there’s nobody, never anyone just a plastic chair is it blue or green or orange? he can't tell it's hard to tell his head is swimming thinking is-- nobody's there nobody’s ever-- where are his  _ **_parents_ ** _ they would be here they should  _ **_be_ ** _ here something went  _ **_wrong_ ** _ \-- _

And past this fear:

_ where's ihiaku? _

And this is how time passes. It feels like a lifetime. 

Later, there will be doctors; there will be police. There will be poking and prodding and prying questions and a lot of people staring at Aleks in helpless confusion, as lost as he is, the blind leading the blind. There will be paperwork, so much paperwork, and it will be the only thing that keeps him going after the devastating, heartbreaking truth is broken to him that his parents aren't really  _ whole _ , anymore. But he still needs to take care of them and the paperwork is apparently how he's going to do it, so he doesn’t think: he buckles down, and he does.

He will leave strict and firm and terrified notations on every piece of paperwork they gather on him, for his medical file and otherwise, all in letters large and urgently underlined:  _ The effects of medicines are  _ **_weakened_ ** _. Traditional healing magic is  _ **_weakened_ ** _. _ His body is now meant to be a self-sustaining system, a closed-loop circuit, and being awake, in pain, but so utterly  _ trapped _ … He doesn't ever want to find out how much of that was the drugs. Those, he learns, retroactively, were the sort they use to induce comas in victims of burns so severe, it's kinder for them to remain unconscious. It’s easier not to think about what that might mean for him in the future.

But all of this will come later. In the moment, all he knows is pain, and then somehow almost worse than that: how even with his thoughts slipping like water through his fingers, every time he drags his eyes open to see that unoccupied chair, all he can focus on, all he can think, is:

_ please _

_ come back _

_ please, im scared; i can't do this, i _

_ please dont leave me  _ **_alone_ ** \--


End file.
